2017-10-24 Reaching for Indigo

Bandcamp Link: Reaching for Indigo
Chicago vocalist Haley Fohr seems to wear many different personas as a performer.

Her last, “Jackie Lynn”, was a sort of, I dunno, a cyber country star? Burning Man Burnout?

In any case, some critics are calling this her most “personal” album to date.

While the vocals are perhaps less abstract than some of her albums, I dunno, front persons and vocalists are always first and foremost story tellers, so I hesitate to use words like “personal” for these stories.

On this album, the group deploys a larger, and in some ways more conventional, sound palette than some of her releases, including a string section.

Pretty cool, and allows her contralto vocals to take front and center stage, though she does not hesitate to deploy her voice as an instrument along with the others in the group. There are some particularly nice interactions between her vocals and the synth player, for example.

I would say this is probably her most moving and emotional album, at least, for me, as a listener. Does that make it “personal”?